s Day. Do you remember it?--

"There are, in this loud, stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime;
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,
Plying their daily task with busier feet
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat."

It seemed as if it were a message to herself, and she could not help
going to the window a few minutes afterward. The faces were mostly
tired-looking and dissatisfied. Some people looked very eager and
hurried, but none very contented. It was the literal daily bread they
thought of; and, when two fashionably-dressed ladies chanced to go by
the window, their faces were strangely like their poorer neighbors in
expression. Miss Sydney wondered what the love for one's neighbor
could be; if she could ever feel it herself. She did not even like
these people whom she watched, and yet every day, for years and years,
she had acknowledged them her brothers and sisters when she said, "Our
Father who art in heaven."

It seemed as if Miss Sydney, of all people, might have been
independent and unfettered. It is so much harder for us who belong to
a family for we are hindered by the thought of people's noticing our
attempts at reform. It is like surrendering some opinion ignominiously
which we have fought for. It is a kind of "giving in." But when she
had acknowledged to herself that she had been in the wrong, that she
was a selfish, thoughtless old woman, that she was alone, without
friends, and it had been her own fault, she was puzzled to know how to
do better. She could not begin to be very charitable all at once. The
more she realized what her own character had become, the more hopeless
and necessary seemed reform.

Such times as this come to many of us, both in knowing ourselves and
our friends. An awakening, one might call it,--an opening of the blind
eyes of our spiritual selves. And our ears are open to some of the
voices which call us; while others might as well be silent, for all
the heed we give them. We go on, from day to day, doing, with more or
less faithfulness, that part of our work we have wit enough to
comprehend; but one day suddenly we are shown a broader field,
stretching out into the distance, and know that from this also we may
bring in a harvest by and by, and with God's help.

Miss Sydney meant to be better,--not alone for the sake of having
friends, not alone